Sales lift for Standard Life’s Irish arm

THE Irish arm of financial services giant Standard Life generated a 17% year-on-year increase in life and pension sales in the first half of this year.

The Edinburgh-headquartered business has around 100,000 customers in Ireland and nearly 71,000 shareholders here.

Domestic net inflows for Ireland, over the period in question — basically measuring the level to which new business value outweighs the value of business lost — grew by over 600% to £70 million (€85m).

This figure was mainly driven higher due to a reduced number of claims during the first half of the year.

With regard to some kind of breakdown in terms of the 17% sales increase for the Irish operations, Standard’s investment bond business continues to perform very strongly here, driven by its top-selling absolute returns fund, the Global Absolute Return Strategies Fund, which is replacing the managed fund in many instances, as investors’ (both institutional and retail) preferred holding.

The good results seen in Ireland were echoed by the group as a whole, which saw a 10% year-on-year increase in first-half operating profit to £182m and an 11% increase in pre-tax profit to £364m, compared with a profit of £328m at the same time last year.

Group chief executive, David Nish commented that the sale of Standard’s banking and healthcare operations have re-focused the business.

“This strong set of results demonstrates the progress we’ve made as a business and the potential for increased profits and dividends as we invest for growth. We operate in markets which have exciting growth opportunities,” said Mr Nish.

“Our transformation programme is driving efficiency and we are investing to grow our business to be more profitable and cash generative, which will deliver our progressive dividend policy to shareholders,” he added.

Regarding outlook, Mr Nish said that, “while the economic background remains uncertain, we believe that the underlying demographic and regulatory trends in our key markets continue to support our future growth potential”.

Total group net inflows, meanwhile, rose by a record 71% (to £5.3bn) in the first half and an interim dividend of 4.35p (up by 4.8% on 2009’s interim payout) has been proposed.

Mr Nish added that Britain, India and Canada are now seen as the main core territories of importance to the group and that small-scale acquisitions will be considered.